Brad DeLong writes an open letter to NY Times' Patricia Cohen, questioning her sanitization of...

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Machiavelli999 Comments (821)
 
The problem with Patricia Cohen's reply is that she has a responsibility to call people on pure lies and BS and she didn't do her job when she let participants in the conference say what amounts to flat out lies. Lies that Brad DeLong pointed out: Unemployment didn't fall, private investment fell.

Both are flat out lies according to the BLS. These are facts and Patricia Cohen should have called conference participants out on their lies.
7 Apr 2009, 09:22 PM Reply Like

austrian63 Comments (133)
 
After reading Brad DeLong's letter, the problem is not with with Ms. Cohen, but with Brad DeLong's letter. He does not seem to want to let the facts of the 1920's and the 1930's get in the way of what he thinks the truth about the great depression should be.

The symposium did not present revisionist history but history. The "growth" of the 1920's was the product of low interest rates and an expanding money supply. When the bubble burst in late 1929 and president Hoover was NOT a free-market president but an interventionist. In fact, Roosevelt ran against Hoover in 1932 accusing Hoover of leading America into socialism.

I realize we do not learn this in middle school history classes but this does not mean it is not true. America did not truly recover from the great depression until 1946 after the troops returned home and the economy was no longer a "war" economy.

The symposium presented facts not myth and facts are should be presented and discussed in an academic symposium.
7 Apr 2009, 11:16 PM Reply Like